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Colorways's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #14 | 3.216 | 3.556 |
| Execution | #14 | 3.216 | 3.556 |
| Sensory | #16 | 3.216 | 3.556 |
| Overall | #17 | 3.015 | 3.333 |
| Metroidvania | #24 | 2.412 | 2.667 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
DragonRuby
Team/Developer
pvande
External assets
"Beauty Flow" and "Inspired" audio tracks by Kevin MacLeod, SFX from https://opengameart.org/content/12-player-movement-sfx and https://opengameart.org/content/sound-effects-mini-pack15, "Kraft Paper Textures" from Resource Boy, "Upheaval" font by Brian Kent, "Robot Woman" model from https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/woman-robot-2275299, assorted rigging animations from Mixamo, AI-generated title screen background
Reference info
@pvande on Discord
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Comments
Loved the music. Very liminal and chill despite the frenetic beat. I liked that I picked up my controller and just played it. Learning about DragonRuby was cool. I love Ruby and it was cool to see a game engine made in it. The color sparks were a neat addition.
There was one loop where I kept getting stuck. I almost gave up but didn't. I kept getting stuck there. I tried the editor and the game hung. Very cool addition but it would have been nice if it worked.
Overall a neat entry.
I'm sorry to hear that the editor didn't work for you! I have had a couple reports that it wasn't usable on machines with older GPUs, and possibly with issues on Windows… Regrettably, I hadn't had time to do any cross-platform testing before launch, and it shows.
Thanks for taking the time, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! I also hope you'll give DragonRuby a try — it's a lot of fun. :)
Really cool entry, I dig the chill vibes. Echoing some other comments, I think the player felt out of place visually, one random idea would have been to make them out of contrasting particles.
While I love the standard metroidvania upgrades, I really like seeing other takes but I would have liked more variety in the lock and keys. The description on the main page is really making me think about this; I think the hallmark of a great ability is that is has “frequent utility”, which is why double jump and dash are so good, they help in combat, regular exploration and simply traversing more fluidly/interestingly/faster. Put differently, they change how you experience the world. Now I’m trying to thing of crazy things like adjusting the focus, some rooms have different focal lengths and you get the ability to adjust is to make them not blurry and reveal hidden things.
The depth aspect was cool, I’ve had a similar thought so it’s good to know it’s successful. Great work overall!
Thanks so much; I'm glad you enjoyed it!
There are definitely jam limitations at play here (e.g. the character art, the soundtrack), and if I were to build this out further I very likely would explore additional movement and thematic abilities. The lock and key scheme I went with here is definitely scraping the floor of what can still be considered a Metroidvania, and while I'm generally happy with how the experiment played out, the sense of growing more and more capable and powerful over the course of the game … just doesn't land. For really large stages, I suspect that lack would be felt even more severely.
Still, if you haven't played around with the stage creation tools in the game, I do recommend giving them a try — it can be a lot of fun to explore what's really possible within the current set of constraints. :)
Great concept and very good level design! The level editor at the end was a surprise, I will tinker with that!
Have a look at "Into the Hive" if you find yourself needing inspiration. ;)
Really cool puzzle concept, the visuals are nice and simple but i think the character looks a bit off. Other then that the sound effects were nice and you did a great job on level design (i KNOW how level design with mechanics like this is hell so props to you for succeeding.) As some others also said it didn't really feel that much like a metroidvania, but i dont see that as a bad thing, it would be no fun if no one tried to innovate. You did really good on this one.
Thanks so much!
On the “Metroidvania feel” front, I knew that cutting so many “traditional” aspects was going to be a risk. Without boss fights, mobility enhancements, or strength progression, some signals that many folks look for get lost. On the other hand, with the simple mechanics I did choose, I managed to build something exploration-driven, non-linear, with gated progression and required backtracking — plus support for speedrunning and the tools for community-built stages. (There’s a second stage I’ve referenced in some other comments where I’ve also played around with environmental storytelling within these constraints.)
All that said, I’m glad you enjoyed it even if it didn’t ring as a Metroidvania to you, as I really enjoyed making it. 😁
Hypnotic and therapeutic. Well done!
i loved this game, usually i like combat metroidvanias and this is a compelte 180 but it just... feels calm, btw i love the visuals love it so much, it feels like one of those games that you played one night you couldnt sleep that you dont remember the name off but you never truly forgot it, the game is unfinished ofc its a jam i dont blame you for it, and i think it would be good to aleast have some traditional metroidvania elements, not like combat, but like maybe a dash idk.. BUT i love this game, polish it up a bit and you have something special here
I'd love to hear more about what you feel is missing — from my perspective, the game has accomplished everything I set out to do, and more. The visual style could be a bit more coherent, and the sound design isn't quite where I want it to be. Movement is still a little ways off feeling ideal too, I suppose...
I've definitely gone back and forth about the mobility upgrades. On the one hand, they open up a lot of additional level design space, and they can really aid in the feeling of growing more powerful as you play. On the other hand, I had hoped from the outset that I could build something that felt like a Metroidvania even without that common trope. That said, if I take this game any further, I probably will end up adding a handful of mobility upgrades to the level editor for folks to play with.
Thanks for giving this a play!
it is a jam game, tbh i just wanted more lol!
I'll take that for the compliment, then! :)
… if you're looking for "more".
Way to try your hand at building a Metroidvania without most of the things that traditionally make it that way. Always fun to experiment. This Z-stacked design is a fascinating approach to an interlocking world. I do find it challenging to remember gates only by color. Perhaps you can use shape or texture to help my mental mapping. I get so lost. Lovely lo-fi flow vibes. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you! I've heard similar feedback about difficulties wayfinding from others — to that end, there _is_ an in-game map of the current layer on the pause screen, and I've explored some level design options for differentiation in "Into the Hive". Did you get a chance to explore anything beyond the introductory stage?
Thanks again!
Ah! This is going to sound dumb, but I didn't even think to try pausing the game because the map wasn't mentioned on your controls description. xD
Tried again! I don't think I got there. The map helps a little, but it's the Z interlocking that's tripping me up. I wonder if being able to tab between the layers on the map screen with some sort of visual cue that indicates which depth I'm on would help more.
No worries! I’m sorry to hear that it was still a bit much. I’d considered providing the ability to browse multiple map layers from the pause screen, but the implementation was cut for simplicity and time…
I appreciate that you were willing to come back and give it another look; if you’re willing to give it one more shot, “Into the Hive” might be a little simpler (somewhat clearer zone themes, more wayfinding hints), and it might be helpful to know that the canonical key order for “A Good Start” is YBVIOR. On the other hand, if you’re content that you’ve given my game its fair shake, I understand completely, and thank you for the feedback. 😁
Oh, yeah, no worries! I totally get scope constraints. More musing in case you want to take it further or as something to consider on future projects.
Is Into the Hive the second area? If so, let me know! I’ll give it a whirl and let you know any additional thoughts now that I’ve got your walkthrough.
I'd say it's less the game's "second area", and more "an experiment I did to try doing more environmental storytelling within the constraints of the map style (and to verify that community level upload/download worked as expected)".
I didn't realize there was community level creation/downloading. Neat! I tried downloading into the hive, but it just stalls onto a grey screen for me.
You’re not alone in that — I deliberately buried the lede, but apparently too
well…I’ll see if I can reproduce the downloading issue on my end. (It was a last minute addition, but I can think of a couple things that might be happening.)
What platform are you running on? My test of the macOS build seemed to work as intended
That one was Windows. I can also try Mac if you’d like.